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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24311587">Awakening</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/code_name_baron/pseuds/code_name_baron'>code_name_baron</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Born Again (본 어게인)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Falling In Love, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:41:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24311587</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/code_name_baron/pseuds/code_name_baron</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sa Bin kissed him first. In a way she woke him up, though Soo Hyuk would never concede that he is in any way a Sleeping Beauty.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Soo Hyuk/Jung Sa Bin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Awakening</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Based on the episode 9, when our Formalin couple meets in the bookstore.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>(he should have realized it sooner...) </p><p>Kim Soo Hyuk didn't plan on becoming a prosecutor. At most he wanted to be a judge, like his father.  But even when he settled on being a prosecutor, he didn't think he'd become so successful. In fact, he didn't even aim for carving a career within the Prosecutor's Office. He was focused on the bigger - at least for him - goal in his work. He was putting away criminals, who tried to escape the law every chance they got. And he, Kim Soo Hyuk, was there every time to get them and bring them to justice. He did many things his own father would not approve. But father would have to be here, alive, to disapprove and he wasn't, because of the human heart's foolishness and naive optimism that goodness wins by the virtue of being good.  In Soo Hyuk's experience, goodness, like justice, was in the hands of ordinary people and people were not always good.  He discovered that there were plenty of people within law-enforcement that went along with this idea that ends justified the means.  Many mistakenly thought he was chasing promotions and he let them think that. </p><p>Along the way he found himself surrounded by people who seemingly accepted his cold and calculating nature and never questioned his distant and detached demeanor.  He realized that he was somewhat different from others when his father died and he didn't cry. Not because he wasn't sad or angry, but because he hated to show his emotions for others to see. Like he was asked to participated in some prescribed reenactment, where everyone had their lines.  He didn't want to repeat lines that weren't his own and he simply was quiet. Later, when he was a teenager and he and his classmates started dating, he confirmed his aversion to doing and saying the things he didn't feel.  He had this feeling like he was missing something crucial that would make him understand why was it so many people lost their minds and committed crimes in the name of love. He never felt anything close to that level of passion. So his dating life was something he didn't think too much of. One less thing to keep him awake at night.  </p><p>Sleep was always an issue for Soo Hyuk. Ever since childhood he had incredibly vivid dreams, which he could only remembered in bits and pieces next morning. These dreams were sometimes scary, his nightscape drenched in blood and heartache. Sometimes, the dreams were cozy and soft, filled with hazy visions of books, warm snow and laughter. These dreams were so tender that when Soo Hyuk would wake up, he'd suffer the feeling of indescribable loss. It didn't make sense - he didn't feel this kind of loss even when his father died. To this day his father's death spurred him to be the effective prosecutor. But these dreams that made him think he lost something incredibly important were so persistent, he developed a habit of meticulous note taking and tracking people and things.  It served him well in his career, but hadn't helped with his sleep.</p><p>His career took off and he found himself a person of influence.  He even had a fiancee. She was beautiful, talented and came from the family with a good standing and many connections. On his part it was almost a marriage of convenience. Not in the sense that he needed or wanted Baek Sang Ah's connections. Rather, she didn't mind his aloof nature and wasn't interested in the rehearsed lines.  Why she was interested in him was not entirely clear to Soo Hyuk, but he figured that Sang Ah had her reasons.  She certainly liked to be seen with him and he enjoyed the physical aspects of their union.</p><p>Still, sometimes Sang Ah complained about his coldness.  Soo Hyuk didn't like to sleep in the same bed as her. On the rare occasions that they spent the night together, he was always up early citing his work as an excuse. He overheard Sang Ah's conversation with her mother, complaining about him. "It's like he doesn't have a heart," Sang Ah's mother said with mild curiosity and he didn't like the possessive tone in his fiancee's voice, when she responded that it was probably better this way. "At least, if he doesn't have a heart, he wouldn't give it someone else.  Like this, he would always be mine." </p><p>He went on like this - cold, efficient, competent - for most of his adult life.  Criminals feared and hated him. Co-workers envied and admired him. Bosses were pleased and suspicious of what they thought was his ambition. Sang Ah planned for an elegant wedding and he dutifully showed up where he was told to be.</p><p>And then it all changed.</p><p>____________________</p><p>Their first meeting was so fleeting, he forgot about it.  She was standing in the sidewalk, hand extended into the air to catch the snowflakes, and he bumped into her on his way to the office. Absent-mindedly he mumbled his apologies, without quite registering the person's face or voice, but something tugged at his senses, like pulling of the old scar: not quite pain, but awareness that it was there. A memory of something he wasn't sure was real.</p><p>(Much later he would realize that she reminded him of his dreams of the warm snow. It was absurd - warm snow! - but when she stood there, with a snowflakes melting in her palms, it was that same feeling of softness and inexplicable loss that momentarily stilled his steps and made him turn around.)</p><p>Short though it was, that first meeting made his night dreams that much more vivid and for many nights afterwards he woke up gasping and wondering why his heart threatened to beat out of his chest. </p><p>The next time he saw her, she was being held at the knife point and he wondered if she truly didn't feel any fear stepping into the situation like that. It was an easy work to get the petty criminal to let go and run, but he remembered her face now, filing it into the category of unimportant (naive, trusting, good, frustratingly kind).</p><p>He was even more frustrated when he run into her a third time. She was talking about the corpse they found by the river and everything about her was tugging at his senses. She wouldn't play along his rules where means justified the ends.  That much was obvious about her immediately. She spoke of the corpse like she was writing a novel. She politely contradicted him at every turn. </p><p>And just like after he woke up from his dreams, his heart beat erratically and rapidly, making him clench his teeth and scowl at the girl with trusting eyes. He left the tent, leaving her holding the ring she successfully retrieved from the dead man's hand, and tried to remember how to breathe...</p><p>He got her file less than a day later. </p><p>Jung Sa Bin's file was fairly ordinary, similar to many other people her age. Except for the fact that several years ago she had almost died from the congenital heart disease and received a heart transplant from a death-row criminal. This fact added a certain melodramatic flare to the otherwise ordinary life. And it wasn't even that dramatic - thousands of people receive transplanted organs each year. </p><p>Yet just at the thought that Jung Sa Bin was at the death's door, struggling with the faulty heart, and that even now her new heart could stop working at any moment, something sharp had sliced his own heart in half and Soo Hyuk needed a moment to recover from the pain. </p><p>He decided to work with her supervisor from now on. If he was so affected by the mere words describing her illness, who knew what seeing her face to face with that knowledge would do to him. </p><p>He just didn't realize that all his resolutions were useless against the strange and visceral need to see her, hear her, and be in her presence. He also didn't realize that she was not just trusting, but too trusting. The girl looked for trouble and didn't heed any of his advice. And when she wasn't looking for trouble, she was saving people. All of his experience screamed at him that she would end up hurt and he'd be damned if he allowed someone so kind to get hurt on his watch. </p><p>Or so he said to himself. In the retrospect, he should have listened to when others pointed out something so obvious to them, but something he denied still - she had his heart, whether he liked it or not.</p><p>And then she kissed him. </p><p>He kept still, afraid that his newly discovered heart would burst if he moved even an inch. </p><p>She pulled back from him, eyes skittish and babbling nonstop about this and that, her voice breathy and so thready, he was worried that it would be her heart that would break.</p><p>And that thought sobered him up.  He wasn't anyone's idea of the prince charming. His life was hard and he was in constant danger and being connected to him put her in the cross-hairs. He could not and would not drag her into his dangerous life.</p><p>All he could do was make sure her own kind and trusting nature didn't get her hurt. He could do at least that.</p><p>_________________</p><p>(he should have realized it sooner that he couldn't fight fate... the princess kissed her prince and woke him up...)<br/>
_________________</p><p> </p><p>When he showed up at the bookstore after weeks and weeks of fighting his own heart and better judgement, he knew that everything would change.</p><p>He didn't even immediately answer her questions, too absorbed in this pivotal moment - a moment he was looking forward to in thousands of his dreams and the moment he dreaded in thousands of his nightmares.  </p><p>His body turned into a monolithic rock: tense, big, unwieldy. </p><p>What if he moved closer that she pulled back? He wouldn't blame her if she did: he was engaged, he was less than ethical, he didn't return her kiss earlier... </p><p>Shaking traitorous thoughts out, Soo Hyuk willed his body to move closer to Sa Bin. </p><p>“I don't know if its because I feel grateful to you,” he breathed and stepped closer. Her eyes were huge and she looked askance at him. "Or maybe because I feel protective since I saved you before," he continued and, if possible, her confusion grew even more prominent. "But I would like to perform an experiment of my own,” he finished speaking quickly, verbalizing something that he had been tormenting him for so long. </p><p>"An experiment?" she drawled in an obvious question, but there were sparks of something in her eyes. He could tell the moment she realized what he said because suddenly her eyes shone and he saw nothing but them. </p><p>Soo Hyuk always remembered that he had to be careful with her, because she was fragile still after her knife wound, but at that moment he forgotten it completely.  This halting voice, and the word “experiment” from her lips, and the fact that these lips were so close, and that he could almost feel her warmth... All of this was woefully not enough and he was immediately parched like he hadn't drank in days.  </p><p>He held her delicate, beautiful and so intimately familiar face in his hands, marveling at the soft skin.  Closing his eyes and following his senses to navigate, he moved closer and unmistakably found Sa Bin's lips and at first only touched them, getting used to the feeling, and then kissed her like he had long dreamed of. </p><p>Dreamed during this long conversation, and during long hours in the office, and every night since her met her, and every day, and every second. </p><p>Her hair slipped and tangled in his hand and it was like his own heart - beating frantically and quickly, greedy for more and afraid at the same time - slid and melded with hers. </p><p>Never again would he allow her to disappear from his sight. He would know everything - how her days go, what food she loves, what dreams she has, what she thinks during the day and what she dreams of at night. Day after day, year after year, on the way to inevitable old age, he would look at her and take care of her, and take care of himself - for her. </p><p>This kiss - very gentle and slow, in which passion was still kindling - was a promise of the future. He kissed Sa Bin as he had never kissed before. </p><p>This kiss was a vow:  it is only the beginning.</p>
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